Aluminum smelters in Iceland paid less than half the amount of taxes that Alcoa director Tómas Már Sigurðsson claimed in the press they had paid.
Tómas Már Sigurðsson, speaking in an interview, claimed that Alcoa had paid about 4 billion ISK in direct taxes last year. However, Vísir reports that when Finance Minister assistant and former tax director Indriði H. Þorláksson took a look at the actual numbers, the figure was actually about 1.9 billion ISK.
“I don’t know what Tómas is talking about,” said Þorláksson in part. “but we asked for information from the State Tax Office on what the deposits had been from aluminum companies this year and the last, because this big talk struck us as a bit odd compared to what we believed to be the case.”
Sigurðsson explained that this has all been a misunderstanding; that what he meant was that when every possible avenue by which aluminum companies and their employees pay taxes are added together, this 4 billion ISK figures comes together.
Aluminum smelters are currently butting heads with Iceland’s government. The Leftist-Green Party, which is part of the ruling coalition and controls among other posts the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Finance, has long been a dedicated opponent of heavy industry in Iceland.